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Planning, Ethnic Cleansing and Dale Farm

Yesterday morning saw the anticipated eviction of Dale Farm. With the failure of the final appeal on Monday, the site was in a state of nervous apprehension. At 7am this morning an £18m operation to clear the area began. All done in the name of greenbelt and planning laws.

The discourse surrounding Dale Farm exposes the underlying intention which Basildon Council could never openly state. People are openly talking about pikeys & gypos, about theiving and about “them” taking over. Any suggestion that this is ethnic cleansing is robustly countered as an accusation that the residents are “playing the race card”, that they “want more rights than the rest of us”. Although sometimes the latent racism does seep through the rhetoric – in 2008, after the Essex Racial Equality Council provided a community centre for the residents a Dale Farm, the leader of the council announced that it had done more to undermine race relations than any another body. For Basildon Council have a particular view of the relations that they would like between the travellers and the settled community, and equality undermines that relation.

The violence unleashed on Dale Farm is unparalled. Cancer patients have had the electricity supply to their breathing apparatus cut; people have been tasered on site; one woman has been taken to hospital with spinal injuries and legal and safety observers have been threatened as they tried to keep those locked on safe. This has been looked on with approval by sections of the population including a Conservative councillor who gleefully anticipated “human kerplunk” as people were removed from the defence tower.While the police accuse residents and protesters of violence and insist that tasers were deployed only as a defensive tactic (presumably when at risk from a notepad weilding legal observer) this is robustly denied by the residents

The only premeditated violence has come from the police — they knew exactly what they were doing when they started beating and Tasering people. This is not how a community should be treated by its own council. It’s illegal for us to travel, but illegal for us to settle down here. We’re getting hit by the police but we’ve got nowhere else to go.

Although the use of tasers is unprecidented in a public order situation, state violence against travellers is not new. In 1985, police charged at a convoy of travellers, beat them with batons and dragged screaming children from their homes so that they could watch them being smashed.

Occurring in an age prior to citizen media and the horizonal communications sytems that we have today, footage showing pregant women, children and people holding babies being clubbed was mysteriously lost after filming, while the narrative played out on television was that of brave police defending themselves against lawless travellers. Not withstanding Kim Sabido of ITN News described it as

…the most brutal police treatment that I have encountered in my career as a journalist…

a policy of zero tolerance where-by the moment a travelling community set up camp illegally, they are targeted by all relevant organizations such as police, the education, social work departments, work and pensions, customs and excise and trading standards…… Inevitably some or all of these organisations would encounter illegalities or irregularities which would result in legal action.

By July this year, he had named his policy “The Tamworth Solution” based on the racist actions of an English Council while describing travellers as a “sourge” on “our” communities. Solutions to undesirable ethnicities have been devised before. We pledged never to repeat them, and yet we see ethnic cleansing being played out in the UK in 2011 on the televisions in our homes, while the homes of the others are destroyed.

Tonight 400 people, including many vunerable adults and approximately 100 children are homeless, two are in hospital and many more injured and traumatised for a piece of land that the council tarmaced over, dumped hardcore onto and let go to waste.

You can always spot ethnic groups are being targetted when language breaks down, cf the BBC’s oxymoronic repeating of the phrase ‘traveller residents’. Those two words are a sign for me that they, like the police, will just not take the time to look at this for what it is and prefer to hastily pigeon-hole and move on. A short cut – just like violence. Forcibly evicting the residents of Dale Farm when they have nowhere else to go is a violation of human rights of 400 people and a brutal and unnecessary act of ethnic cleansing.

When it comes to issues of land ownership and occupation,the courts will almost always side
with those who have most money (those who can afford to pay the biggest legal fees).
The travellers never had a chance once vested interests decide they had to go.
I am really surprised that their human rights appear to have been abused and the courts have
not supported them but then again it is probably a case of insufficient defence funds being available.
A very shameful event and an indictment against our so called democracy.

There was a disturbing account recently on the Guardian’s Cif site. It described a legitimate caravan site in Scotland purchased by gypsies or travellers. Soon after the council acted to close it down. Apparently there was corruption and a local businessman was involved. Apparently it was widely reported in the press at the time–some years back. It was also subject to a Scottish Office inquiry, as then was.